Monday, August 9, 2010

CHIMAYO — Friday marks the 65th anniversary of the U.S. droppingan atomic on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, an attackmeant to end World War II. Activists have mobilized on eightacres in Chimayó with a plan to ensure that, on that day, LosAlamos National Laboratory hears their calls for a nuke-freeworld.

The 10-day event here — called Disarmament Summer Encampment — isbeing organized by Think Outside the , a national nuclearabolition group. Activists are camping on the grounds, owned byTeresa Juarez, whose grandson Miguel Moreno lives there and is oneof Disarmament Summer's lead organizers. Seven of the family'sdogs run around freely during the daytime, and tents areeverywhere as nuclear opponents continued to fill up the camp onSunday.

The plan is to gather Friday at Ashley Pond in Los Alamos for arally that will incorporate performance art to tell stories ofnuclear power's damaging effects on communities around thecountry. Then the group will march through the town and onto labproperty.

What the protest will look like has yet to be determined (there istalk of puppets), but members of Think Outside the want thewhole procession carefully planned, so that when they take to theatomic 's birthplace on Friday, they're armed with a group ofprotestors educated on what exactly they're standing up for.

To that end, about 30 people gathered in a wide circle under atarp Sunday afternoon for a workshop called "Nukes 101." Speakersfrom varying parts of the country took turns tackling a differentaspect of what they see as nuclear power's destructive legacy.

Twa-le Abrahamson told the group about the Spokane Reservation inWashington, where she's from. Abrahamson said uranium mining wenton there for decades, beginning in the 1950s, and the healtheffects have been devastating for tribal members who spent yearsworking the mines with no clue of the toll to their bodies.

"A lot of people are sick," she said. "There are a lot of widows."

Rozlyn Humphrey, from Aiken, S.C., said plutonium from theSavannah River Site, built near Aiken in the 1950s to helpconstruct nuclear weapons, has done irreparable harm to the landand river there.

"You dare not eat fish out of the Savannah River," she said. Andin a part of the country where hunting is dogma, she said, no onehunts because radiation in the ground has caused the vegetation tobe contaminated, so animals that eat it aren't safe.

Other activists told similar tales, but the essential point ofDisarmament Summer Encampment may have been most plainly expressedby Jennifer Nordstrom, from Racine, Wis.: "Nuclear weapons arestill being used — in testing and in the global politics of threatand fear. ... New Mexico is the sacrificial state for the nuclearweapons industrial complex."

Organizers with Think Outside the don't want the lab closeddown — Miguel Moreno said too many people in rural San MiguelCounty depend on Los Alamos for work: "We don't want to takeanything away; we want that money, we just want it for somethinggood."

Think Outside the 's Jono Kinkade said his organization iskeeping a close eye on planning for a new plutonium pit in LosAlamos. The lab earlier this year announced plans for itsChemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement building, whichwould take a decade to build, with 22,500 square feet of labspace, much for analyzing plutonium and other radioactivematerials. Funding for the building still hasn't been approved byCongress, but the total price could be $4 billion, based onNational Nuclear Security Administration proposals.

"Stopping the CMRR (from being built) is a central focus," Kinkadesaid. "We're trying to create political pressure, because thatmoney can be better spent on cleaner technology and renewableenergy."

LANL officials have said that the mission, for decades, has notbeen to make new nuclear weapons but to maintain the country'sexisting stockpile. As nuclear age, scientists need toupgrade their technology. That work would be carried on at theCMRR building. And former NNSA manager Don Winchell told anaudience in Española in June that the CMRR was vital for nationalsecurity because of nuclear forensics work that helps thegovernment track nuclear materials in other parts of the world.

"We're not building fancy new weapons," Winchell, who retired lastmonth, said then.

"If they want to have a beautiful, expensive new facility, why notuse it to create renewable energy?" Jennifer Nordstrom said."There could be an economic transformation if they changed theirfocus from and destruction to life-changing renewables."

Think Outside the is hoping that message comes across loudand clear Friday.

Christianity Untried

Chesterton says:"The Christian idealhas not been triedand found wanting.It has been found difficultand left untried."Christianity has not been triedbecause people thoughtit was impractical.And men have tried everythingexcept Christianity.And everythingthat men have triedhas failed. ~Peter Maurin

Gilbert House

in Glenwood City, Wisconsin

Thank You For Being Generous!

About Gilbert House

We are an intentional Distributist community in west-central Wisconsin striving together to live the ideals of the the Bible and the Catholic Worker Movement since 2004. We are actively engaged in sustainable gardening, corporal and spiritual Works of Mercy and living the most authentic Catholic Christianity possible with an eye towards the social teachings of the Church and the betterment of our youth and families. The lives and writings of Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day, G.K. Chesterton, Hillaire Belloc, Eric Gill and many others, for better or worse, inform our ideals and ambitions....

Contact us:

433 East Oak StreetGlenwood City, WI 54013715-265-4070

gkc.catholicworker{at}gmail.com

Why Gilbert House is not tax deductible:

In the tradition of our founders, Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day, the Gilbert House Catholic Worker is not an incorporated agency or organization and donations made to us are not, therefore, tax deductible. We are also firmly opposed to possessing tax deductible status, even if this means that people will not help our cause. This is because as Catholic Workers, the means with which we achieve our ends come at a personal sacrifice, and the means are just as important as the ends themselves. If people, churches or organizations want to donate to the ongoing apostolate of any Catholic Worker House, they should do so because it is the right thing to do, not because the government gives them a tax write off. Our advice is simple: do what you can, with what you have, where you are. That is what we are trying to do, and we invite you to help. Omnia ad majorem Dei gloriam!

Current House Needs

Travel/pocket Bibles & journals/pens

travel toiletries and bath bags

grocery store gift cards

camp tarps and sleeping bag liners

gas cards

telephone cards

bicycles

*good* Christian novels books for guests

embroidery supplies and fabric

a roofer

sheet rock

greenhouse materials

vegetable and flower seeds

gardening supplies

copies of the Catechism

books

land for food raising

cash donations

"The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up." ~Dorothy Day

Facebook Badge

"Where are the heroes and the saints, who keep a clear vision of man's greatest gift, his freedom, to oppose not only the dictatorship of the proletariat, but also the dictatorship of the benevolent state, which takes possession of the family, and of the indigent, and claims our young for war?" ~Dorothy Day.